


The Axe, the Rose, the Road

by nietzscheanson



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Purple Prose, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-09 02:04:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6884827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nietzscheanson/pseuds/nietzscheanson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you have a lover all mangled, broken, burned alive by life, a lover whose love was never enough, a lover whose hollow chest swallows the winds of your being whole, you should never expect it to be easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Axe, the Rose, the Road

**Author's Note:**

> That plum scene tore my heart apart, and I was forced to dramatise everything and write this. Nice. I was listening to My Least Favorite Life by Lera Lynn through the whole thing, so you may find it more atmospheric to do the same while reading.

THE AXE

Some days are better than others. Some days he doesn't wake up before the dawn breaks, and he doesn't forcefully pull himself out of the bed to bend over the balcony rails in an attempt to catch his breath after yet another nightmare. Some days he doesn't tremble with Russian gibberish on his lips, he doesn't flinch from his lover's touch, he doesn't stay staring at one spot for the whole damnedest day. Some days. Not most.

For the past few months, it has been like this: tear yourself from sleep, sit on the edge of the bed for good half an hour, miss the second you walk into the kitchen, sit listlessly behind the counter until the very midday, miss Steve's gentle kiss on the top of your head, miss careful hands stroking your hunched shoulders, miss any questions, any phrases muttered. Steve never leaves his side, even if Bucky barely lets him touch or even speak. They rarely speak now — Bucky can hardly hold a conversation, constantly losing the thread and mixing up languages.  
“How was your day?”, Steve usually asks him.  
“Good.” Bucky says.  
“Did you like the weather?” Steve tries.  
“Не знаю, плохо*. I don't know, did you?”  
“I thought it was beautiful. I thought about you, how you used to always get ice-cream stains on your shirt whenever we got out on a hot day. You never noticed them, and could go like this for a whole week. I thought it was adorable. I always thought how you were the most careless person I had ever known, and how it made you so easy, so... sunny. I still think so.” Steve's voice breaks, and he never finishes what he has actually planned to say. He constantly reprimands himself for dumping all those memories onto Bucky, onto his defenceless consciousness, probably making him feel regretful and hopeless.  
“I'm sorry.” Bucky doesn't seem phased by Steve's outburst, and Steve's heart clenches when he realises how numb and empty Bucky is. 

THE ROSE

“It's okay. We're okay.” Steve convinces himself and tries to convince Bucky, too, as he presses a soft kiss onto Bucky's temple, and receives no reaction whatsoever. But Steve is happy enough to feel Bucky's warmth near him, to simply stay there, look at his face, maybe stroke his palm. He loves getting out on early mornings (when Bucky is still asleep and the day is likely to be among the “better” ones), running to the corner store to buy fruit and sudoku that Bucky has apparently gotten addicted to. He loves coming back to Bucky still laying in their bed, dressed in nothing but Steve's t-shirt, usually looking towards the sun beaming into the room. He loves Bucky's lazy movements when he turns towards Steve (although Steve tries not to think about how his lover is usually quite slow and how it is an apparent symptom of depression), and sometimes even manages a small smile. On days like these, Steve is allowed to touch Bucky without the fear of him flinching away and shutting down. And Steve does touch, he shamelessly indulges his hands that have missed his lover just so, so. He runs his hands along Bucky's body, he kisses Bucky's skin with utmost delicacy, he drinks up small whimpers and moans that slip past Bucky's rosy lips and into their endless kiss. “I love you so much,” Steve always says, never stops saying, as he places desperate kisses on the metal arm, in a pathetic and hopeless attempt to deaden Bucky's hatred towards everything in his own life, in his own body. “I'm going crazy, definitely, that's how much I love you. I would let the world burn itself for you, god, I love you...” He blabbers, sometimes he feels like crying, but he never allows himself. Not in front of Bucky (though Bucky rarely looks him in the eyes when they make love, but Steve thinks it's okay, it's one of his quirks, never-mind that it has never been so before). 

THE ROAD

Sometimes Steve thinks about his own utter exhaustion. He feels completely sucked dry by the world, by the history, by everything he has seen, felt, processed, realised, said. He muses to himself about how he needs a break, and sometimes a selfish thought passes when he sees Bucky unable to get out of bed once again — he thinks it should be him, Steve, who gets to unapologetically stay under covers for weeks on end. Steve hates himself for this — for thinking that it would have been easy in the first place. When you have a lover all mangled, broken, burned alive by life, a lover whose love was never enough, a lover whose hollow chest swallows the winds of your being whole, you should never expect it to be easy. You wear the mourning together with him, and you go forward, you go, you go...

Steve never stops going. He goes to the lost supermarkets of New York to find the treats Bucky used to love prior to the war. He stays beside Bucky whenever he wakes up at four in the morning and goes on infinite bus rides around the city to try and make sense of something that has lost any meaning long before. Steve looks at Bucky and understands that this something, for Bucky, has become their lives. Bucky's own life, especially. Steve tucks a brown lock behind his lover's ear and places a feather-kiss onto neon-illuminated lips. “Let's go home.” Bucky says. And Steve takes him home. And they both know that the whole sense and the meaning have always been in the road back home. 

 

 

*I don't know, I've been feeling bad.


End file.
